


Undertow

by lyrithim



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Disabled Character, Disabled Character of Color, F/F, Fandom Trumps Hate, Injury Recovery, Post-Season/Series 03, Quadriplegia, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 03:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11118924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyrithim/pseuds/lyrithim
Summary: Original prompt (shortened): Modern high school AU. Korra is a star athlete who is paralyzed following a swimming accident.Written for Fandom Trumps Hate.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is written for the lovely wombatking for the Fandom Trumps Hate auction. It’s _extremely_ late, and I’m so, so sorry about that. Nonetheless, I hope you can enjoy the fic now!
> 
> Most of the plot is given through wombatking’s prompt. I’ve included it in full in the endnotes because it’s highly spoilery.  
> Please forgive any inaccuracies, and feel free too to correct me if I get facts wrong.
> 
> I’m going to add the Google definition here, because I rather like the resonances it brings out:
> 
>  **undertow** /ˈəndərˌtō/  
>  another term for rip current, used in the incorrect belief that rip currents drag swimmers below the surface.

This was how Korra felt about water, plain and simple.

It was her life.

There hadn’t been a day she wasn’t swimming, her mother always liked to say. Back when Korra was younger, this was said out of frank exasperation as her mother stroked her chubby little cheeks. Korra overstayed the Swimming Tods program every week and threw dramatic, splashing hissy fits whenever the apologetic teenage lifeguard came over to announce time was up. The family couldn’t take a vacation at the beach without Tonraq having to lug her out of the waves and over his shoulders after half an hour of begging and bartering.

After the shop did well enough for the family to move to a nicer part of Republic City, Korra filled up the pristine acrylic tub tucked away in the corner of their new bathroom and practiced perfect little butterfly strokes. So much water splashed out of it that Senna had to wade ankle-deep to pluck her eight-year-old daughter out the tub. What followed was the scolding of a lifetime and the introduction of Old Woman Katara, their widowed next-door neighbor, into Korra’s life as her de facto babysitter and soon favorite grandmother.

Katara would revel Korra with stories of her brother and friends in the days before the United Republic was founded, about how the four of them together would solve crimes and lead peace rallies and fight Bad Guys and find love. It was wild. Halfway through the tales, Katara casually revealed herself to be a former Olympic gold medalist in the 200m backstroke, the first gold medalist of Republic City, and Korra was forever starstruck.

Korra continued to swim. She was winning local competitions and regional championships by the time she was eleven, became the Republic City 200m Freestyle Junior Swim Champion when she was thirteen, and toured the world with other top swimmers in the city, some twice her age, when she reached fourteen.

At Katara’s recommendations, Korra’s parents enrolled her in Temple High, a specialized academy known for both athletic and academic achievements. Katara’s son Tenzin worked as the chair of the physical education department and the swim team’s fearsome head coach. The strange obsession with perfecting different breathing patterns aside, Tenzin was a great coach, understood his swimmers’ limits and understood when they were slacking. Korra had never had a day of relaxation since—and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

* * *

Korra’s fingers pressed against the tiled wall, and it was as though she could see everything around her, from other swimmers fast at her heels, to the grains of heads in the cheering crowd, to the man keeping time just a few feet away above her, squatting next to the diving block. In that instance, her eyes were squeezed shut behind her goggles, underwater, the currents she had ripped through still sliding their way past her skin. But in the survey of her mind she saw it all, every trembling atom of them like a tickle in her vision. She loved it.

Now clinging against the wall, she burst to the surface, and that was another rush of sensations altogether, the return of the real world—the sight of it, the smell, the _noise_ , not just the clean physicality of the swim. Everything above water was so much more golden than the smooth pale blue of the painted pool, so much warmer, and she savored this for a moment more before lifting her head.

On the electronic scoreboard far above the audience stands was the number 1 listed proudly next to her name. She felt a brief surge of pride before looking at her time— 1:38:76. Her personal best. Certainly a new record for Temple High—maybe even one for the whole of Republic City too. She could wait till later to find out.

Seconds passed. Then the other swimmers arrived at the endpoint, lifting their heads above water, panting, then smiling, self-deprecating, as they reached over the floating lane lines to Korra. Some of them were more than happy to shake hands with the young legend of Republic City—and, very soon, it was said, of the world—and Korra responded with equal enthusiasm.

The crowds cheered again when Korra lifted herself out of the pool, and she did a little wave before Tenzin stalked over her, raising an eyebrow. She ducked her head and rubbed the back of her neck in embarrassment. He sighed, the sound of it inaudible over the din of the swim meet, but Korra caught a proud smile tugging at his lips as he draped a towel over her shoulders and shoved a bottle of water into her hand.

The next event was due to begin soon—men’s relay, 400m—so Korra and the rest of the athletes were herded toward the locker rooms, Korra starting some light chat with a few of her competitors. Before she crossed the door, however, she lifted her eyes again to the stands to search for— But there they were. Bolin, jumping up and down with a rolled-up newspaper in one hand and a banner in another, and Mako, holding up the other end of the banner with the usual look of perpetual grump on his face. Then, beneath the bright green YOU GO KORRA YOU GOOOOO GURRRRRLLLL stitching, was Asami.

Her eyes met Korra’s. Korra, who had been waving wildly their way, felt shy all of a sudden, her hand now by the side of her face in a little half-wave. Asami blew a kiss her way. Korra felt her heartbeat ramp up again, like it had just been seconds ago that she finished first in the best event of her life. She wanted to race to the edge of the stands, climb up the railings, and lean her lips against Asami’s own, let them meet halfway—but the other swimmers around Korra was sweeping her through the door, so she settled for dorkily catching the kiss, seeing Asami’s small giggle, and returning one of her own.

* * *

“So, senior year, huh?”

Korra and Asami were settled in one of the dozen of rooms in Varrick’s mansion of a house, listening to the party outside drum bass beats and the occasional cheers against the closed door. This was Varrick’s end-of-the-year summer farewell party. Korra had spent the first hour of the party exchanging hugs with members of her summer teammates, some of whom were due to leave Republic City the next day, and beating Bolin and Mako at beer pong. At half past eleven, Asami dragged her into a dance to Taylor Swift’s latest hit, then Korra dragged Asami behind the hedges in the backyard for a make-out session. And now, giggling and tired from the day’s swim meet, Korra let Asami lean into the crook of her neck, tracing patterns on the skin above Asami’s wrists, just below the sleeve. The alcohol was siphoning off, and Korra felt at once cooler and lighter as the night rolled on.

“Yeah,” Korra said.

“Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” said Asami.

It was, and Korra’s mind drifted, inevitably, toward graduation. Strange as it was for her to say, given that she had her fair share of national and international competitions, it was impossible for Korra to imagine a life outside of Temple High. She would miss this, the closeness Katara had told her only existed in these strange and tender teenage years: classes with Mako and Bolin, practice with Tenzin and her teammates, and silent moments like these with Asami.

There was another reason, too, that Korra did not want to look too far ahead of the horizon. Korra had spent her entire life dreaming of becoming an international champion, competing against the best swimmers of the world. Already, recruiters from Berkeley and Stanford were coming to Temple High School to watch her practices, after her record-breaking performances at the national meets her junior year.

Republic City had no universities that would get Korra where she needed. Yet Republic City was where Asami must stay after graduation. Ever since Hiroshi Sato was convicted in their freshman year, Korra knew that Asami would do everything in her power to keep Future Industries running and redeem her family name. That Asami had managed to do so all these years while maintaining her status as their class’s valedictorian hopeful was a miracle in itself—Korra couldn’t ask her to leave Republic City too, just to be with Korra.

But they still had an entire year’s worth of memories to make. It was too early for these kinds of thoughts.

“Yeah,” Korra said. Then her thoughts turned and she heaved out a long, dramatic sigh.

“Thinking of classes?” Asami teased.

“Yup,” Korra said. “ _Pre_ calculus was hard enough, and now I have to take _calculus_? I don’t even know where to start.”

“It’s alright, I’ll tutor you,” Asami said, reaching up to kiss Korra on the cheek. “Just like before.” Just like back when she was dating Mako, and Korra was wildly jealous on two ends and torn without understanding why. Man, was she glad to put freshman and sophomore year all behind her.

* * *

The morning after the party found both Bolin and Mako extremely hungover and, the latter, still slightly drunk. When Korra pulled up Asami’s car to the front of their apartment building, the two boys groaned simultaneously.

“No, Asami, please,” Bolin said, letting his brother collapse to the ground as he sank to his knees next to the shotgun seat. “Please, have mercy. We already puked three times each and maybe busted the plumbing—”

“Gross,” Asami said, but she was smiling.

“—please, please don’t let Korra drive. Me and Mako just might die on the way to the beach—”

“Oy!” Korra called out.

“ _Please_.”

“Well,” Asami said pityingly, with the wisdom of a rich girl who had seen too many other rich children make the same mistake with alcohol at a much younger age. “This will be a good lesson for you next time, won’t it?”

Korra laughed as Mako hauled Bolin off the ground, shaking his head and muttering darkly at his friends. They then drove north.

Three hours and many winding mountain paths later, they arrived at the small cottage that Bolin’s friend’s cousin’s hairdresser’s daughter’s son-in-law had agreed to lend to the four of them for a weekend. The car remained beautiful and stainless on the inside and out, but that was likely because of an unspoken and unshakable understanding that blowing chunks in Asami’s self-funded, self-designed, self-engineered sports car would result in some bloody and painful demise. The cottage itself was a short, squat thing, built back when the surrounding countryside of Republic City, including this suburb, had maintained its economy through fishing. The water scars along the side of its painted brick walls told of countless hurricanes weathered, countless thunderstorms endured.

There was a balcony on the second floor that faced the sea. Bolin discovered it first, and his gleeful hollering brought Korra and Asami, then Mako, by his side. The sun was fierce in its place high in the horizon, bleaching color out of the sky. Feather-wisps of clouds dusted the surrounding air. Over the rising jut of the cliffs was the ocean itself, stirring, deep-green and smooth. Little brightly colored dots indicating surfers rode the waves.

“Last one there has to wash the dishes tonight!” Bolin suddenly called out, darting back out of the room.

“Hey, not fair!” Korra yelled, but ran after him nonetheless, because _she_ wasn’t about to take any chances. “You just don’t want to do chores!”

It took them three minutes to reach the beach—Korra won, of course, she was as fast on land as she was in water. Mako and Asami meandered by a few minutes after Bolin, proudly, but Korra knew that was simply because they didn’t want to lose and colluded for a tie instead.

They spent most of the day on that beach. They played Chicken against each other more times than they could count. Korra and Bolin had a sandcastle contest that eventually devolved into burying Mako from the chest down and sculpting a mermaid’s body below his neck, Asami gleefully bedazzling his tail with shells. While they hiked around the tidal pools, Korra found a pale pink conch shell in the saltwater crevices and handed it to Asami—“They say you can hear the sea anywhere, with one”—which prompted Bolin and Mako to make loud gagging noises with shouts of _Sap!_. In response, Asami rolled her eyes at the boys and kissed Korra full on the lips.

* * *

They woke up the next day to a light drizzle—a bummer, since they had intended to spend another day at the beach. The weather reports assured them the rain would dissipate in the afternoon. At Asami’s suggestion, then, they decided to hike along the seaside cliffs for the morning instead.

The sky did clear briefly around noon. Korra, who lost the rock-paper-scissors match that followed, was charged with buying bentos as the others made their way to the beach. It took her forever to find a convenience store that didn’t charge tourist prices: a bleached concrete cube pinched between a souvenir shop and a restaurant both dressed in the style of a thatch hut. Outside the grocery store was a man with a shaved head in simple gray robes. He sat cross-legged on the still-wet pavement, back straight, eyes closed.

Korra did not notice him at first. But when she arrived at the shop’s doorsteps, the man spoke:

“You’re a city girl, huh?”

“Um.” She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her: he had not moved from his meditative pose. “Yes, sir, I am. From Republic City.”

“Republic City,” he repeated.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Um. Are you—are you from Republic City too?”

For a long stretch of time he was silent. When Korra figured he had no more to say to her, she moved to open the door. But the man interrupted her again.

“Mercury in the water,” he said, his eyes still closed.

“Sir?”

He chuckled. It was then Korra sensed there was something different about the man—that despite his outward appearances, he was nothing like the monks in her local temple that led men and women in prayer songs. “Isn’t that an idea? Young woman, _mercury in the water_.” He began to laugh. “Mercury in the water. Mercury in the water...”

Unnerved, Korra ducked into the store. When she exited later, the man was no longer there.

Clouds had gathered while she was in the store, and the weather deteriorated even faster as she made her way back to Mako, Bolin, and Asami. Soon it was raining again, falling in wavering silver sheets on the asphalt. Korra weaved between one-story buildings and across cars shining yellow lights that made the skies look darker. What she thought to be a ten-minute walk took at least twice the amount of time before she finally reached the beach, fogged up now with the rain. People were hauling picnic baskets, umbrellas, and pets past the beach’s sand dunes back to town.

“Hey—” she called out to Asami, who was standing next to the huge log they had gathered at yesterday. Asami waved back and ran up to her, Bolin and Mako trailing behind. “I got the food, but do you guys want to head back instead—”

“ _Help!_ ” came a scream. A woman was running across the sand. “God, someone help me, my child— My son is _drowning_ someone please, please help me oh my god—”

Korra turned to her, swept in front of her as she was passing Korra. “Ma’am, what are you saying, your son—”

The woman was tall, broad-shouldered, and her grip across Korra’s shoulders was strong. Her face was caught in a twist of pain, her tears blurred into rain. “My son was swimming not far off when it started to rain and all of a sudden I couldn’t _see_ him anymore _please_ young lady you have to help me—”

Something in the horizon drew the woman’s gaze away. She shouldered past Korra and pointed: “There, oh god I see him, please, he’s only nine, I don’t know— oh god oh god I need to—”

Korra couldn’t see anyone through the rain, but she didn’t doubt a mother. The woman was about to run back to the surf, but Korra stopped her. “Please, ma’am, let me. I’m a swimmer. I got my lifeguard license when I was fourteen. I’ll be able to bring your son back—”

“ _Korra_ ,” she heard Asami whisper behind her. At some point during the conversation, she, as well as Mako and Bolin, had come to stand behind her. “I don’t know if you should do this. The waves are too strong—we should be calling the coast guard—”

“He’s right there,” the woman said above Korra. “ _Please_ , he’s right _there_ , there isn’t _time—_ ”

“Call the coast guard,” Korra told Asami, and  smiled. “In the meantime, let me handle it.” She pulled Asami in and kissed her on the forehead, even as Asami looked away to hide her frown. To the boys, Korra handed off the bentos and said, nodding toward the mother, “Take care of her for now, won’t you?” And to the mother herself, she asked, “What is your son’s name, ma’am?”

“Red,” the woman breathed, her face slack with relief. “His name is Red.” Korra memorized her features, wondering if the boy had the same lotus-white skin and fire eyes.

Korra nodded. “I’ll find him, ma’am.” She kissed Asami’s fingers once. “I’ll be back just a bit,” she said, before slipping away.

When she dived into the water, the chill of the sea slipped right under Korra’s skin and pushed into the marrows of her bones. The currents too were stronger than what she was accustomed to in Temple High School or the city pool, but they were nothing she could not handle. She was strong enough to master them all.

When she broke surface, sea winds beat her over the head and scarred her cheeks and the tips of her ears. She pulled in a gulp of air and began to swim.

It felt like climbing up boulders in the middle of a snowstorm. Lifting her head was difficult—the rain was so heavy, and the waves so uneven, that more often than not she was choking on water, then choking again as she tried to cough out the water that had entered her windpipe—the first day of water polo all over again.

A few minutes into her fruitless peddling in the water, she looked back, convinced that she was only a few meters away from shore—and found that she could not see the beach at all.

There wasn’t any time to think about that. She cut past the first set of waves and treaded water as fast as she could to lift herself up.

“Red!” she shouted. “Red, where are you? Your mother sent me—” She coughed out a mouthful of saltwater after a wave caught her by surprise. “Red!” she called. “Red, are you here? Red—”

She was slammed into the water.

She opened her eyes. She saw a matted layer of foam painted dull green under clouds of sand. Spread out above her. A giant, looming hand.

Then a stray curl of current shoved her bodily into the ocean floor. The back of her head landed on something hard. She felt a burst of nausea. Black stars rolled sickeningly along the bottom of her vision. Her chest caved in from the weight of the blow. Her breath left her in a flutter of bubbles. They wobbled away like jellyfish.

Then she was scraped along the ground, cutting ribbons of her arms. Then she rose, thrust midway up the seafloor. She was caught. Her hair fanned around her head. Everything was still.

Another current tunnel through. Korra was swung into a sandbar, head-first.

She landed wrong. She was hit in a bad way. She could tell. It was her last thought before she blacked out.

 

 

Water sloshed off her face and there was air again. Breathing felt like someone shoving a thousand metal needles down her throat. She needed to save the boy. She needed—

 

 

The burst of brightness pierced straight into her skull. She couldn’t open her eyes, so she focused on keeping her head lifted above the water. She couldn’t, and she felt conscious submerging again with the fading light.

 

 

There was a change in elevation. Her head was laid lightly against what felt like a plastic tarp. The ground jolted, pressing into that tender spot in her skull. She felt like hurling. There were human voices around her. Caging her in.

 

 

She came to from a familiar scent—Asami’s hair, bunched together in thick strands from the rain. Korra could see the tear tracks down Asami’s cheeks.

“Korra, dear, please talk to me—” Asami was babbling. “Tell me, where does it hurt? Help’s coming soon, alright baby? Please, hang on—” And Korra would remember this, later on, remember Asami’s cool, soft hands stroking her face, Asami’s warm tears dotting her cheek.

Pain was a simple sensation to understand. The lack of it was not. And it took long, horrifying seconds for Korra to realize that she felt nothing else at all.

“I can’t—” she gasped, and it was as though she was underwater again. “I can’t move.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please also note that the chapter slips into close third-person singular POV, so some parts of the narration is in her thoughts and are not the authorial truth. Korra is hard on herself.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Mild depictions of depression / general unpleasant thoughts. Body image issues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In another world perhaps, where she was braver or less ashamed, Korra would mourn her loss, accept what happened to her in a day or two, and get on with her life. But that wasn’t what happened.

In another world perhaps, where she was braver or less ashamed, Korra would mourn her loss, accept what happened to her in a day or two, and get on with her life. But that wasn’t what happened.

Korra didn’t remember the events immediately after she woke up on the beach with Asami at her side. She knew they brought her to a hospital nearby and placed her under sedation in the ICU. She knew that, after the doctors made sure her vitals were stable, she was placed under an X-ray. And they would tell her what she now knew: She had broken her neck. There was a bad lesion at the C4 vertebrae, bad enough to damage the nerves that connected to all four of her limbs. She was paralyzed below her shoulders.

“How long?” she had asked a kind-faced nurse.

“Well, miss,” the nurse said. “It really depends on the circumstances, the injury, the people. I’m afraid it’s not something people just recover from.”

Just recover from.

Water had gotten into her lungs, and she suffered a bout of pneumonia that tilted this way and that between light and life-threatening until it finally faded away under the press of drugs. She had lost control of her diaphragm and was hooked up to a ventilator. Being trached was uncomfortable to say the least, painful when it wasn’t put on right, and bloody on the worst days. Her voice came out strange, like it was chopped up and taped together—it wasn’t her own, she thought. She felt like a sci-fi creation covered in a cloud of machinery and tubes.

She was taken out the ICU after nineteen days, and they released her to a specialist spinal unit at the main hospital in Republic City. The doctors there placed her under supervision to monitor the extent of the injury after the spinal shock was deemed over and the swelling at her spine had gone down. There she stayed for four more months.

The Republic City Central Hospital was the best equipped in the nation. It was also one of the most crowded. She shared a room with an older man with liver issues who was unconscious most of the time, and spent his waking hours shouting at one relative or another. Nurses and doctors bustled through the halls twenty-four hours a day. The pediatric wing was not far away, and often she heard hospitalized children howling for their parents deep into the night. Nurses rushed in the suite every two hours to flip her from her stomach to her back, or from her back to her stomach, to prevent pressure sores. She couldn’t sense it if her body was complaining now, they reminded her. Sitting on her ass alone could lead to infections.

She couldn’t sleep, most of the time.

But the first month at the hospital was, paradoxically, the easiest. Looking back, she thought it was because the reality of it hadn’t sunk through yet. Asking her mother or a nurse to help her change, to empty her urinary bag, to clean her in the mornings, to move from place to place—those were embarrassing ordeals, but they weren’t yet humiliating. It was true that, even then, she would wake up from nightmares of drowning to find her face pressed into a pillow soaked in her own sweat, her neck sore from the twists and turns she made in her sleep, and the rest of her paralyzed, like it wasn’t even part of her. But she had suffered injuries before, and fears that seeped into her nighttime hours. She always persevered. There was no reason she wouldn’t push past this—this _block_ , too.

She had her friends with her. She had family. Mako and Bolin visited biweekly, and Asami more than that—whenever she could. Tenzin had swept into her room once or twice, carrying with him bouquets and cards from the Temple High swim team. Korra told jokes about how she was going to get her new wheelchair spray-painted pink, blue, and purple. Korra made them grand promises. She would regain function of her arms, of course, and then she would be working on her legs—she wanted to be standing in a year’s time—she was hoping to return to full function in two—

But the first month passed, and October came.

She began basic physical therapy, but it sloshed off her body—her useless arms, her dead legs. The doctors asked her to focus on her toes and visualize making one move: she would do this in her room for hours at times, to no avail. There were strange, ghost flashes of sensations down her fingers at times, but like the phantom pains she sometimes felt on her chest, they faded into nothing. They forced her to practice breathing without a ventilator every day. Sometimes she managed through the target time. Sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she started choking because it felt again as though her lungs were being crushed between the tower of water and the cutting seafloor.

The nightmares began to haunt her waking hours. She was incontinent, and if the nurses weren’t careful, she made a mess of herself. She remained a complete quadriplegic. She didn’t want to hear her own voice. One day she woke up with a burgeoning pain in her neck, and she was pumped with drugs that left her woozy. Three days would fly past without her realizing.

The people around Korra kept telling her how lucky she was. Her parents told her she could have died, that accidents like hers took away the lives of dozens of young people every day. What mattered to them, they said, was that she was there with them now, safe and sound. The nurses went along a similar vein: a degree’s change of angle would have suffocated her; a couple centimeters up and she would have lost the ability to turn her head or swallow. Local TV stations wanted to interview her: the former star athlete, her abilities lost forever in a terrible accident, yet—she was living so happily, wasn’t she? She lived in grace and gratefulness, bringing hope to the rest of us.

Korra acted like a brat to those she did have to face—ignoring her father when he brought dinner, turning her head the other way from her mother when she fed Korra. On some days Katara visited too. Korra knew she worked as a chiropractor for a while before she retired, but Katara’s advice consisted mostly of waiting for time to heal, until one day Korra finally snapped at Katara. Korra was so horrified that she blubbered out her apologies, before she started crying. Katara wrapped her arms around Korra’s shoulders as she let out huge, ugly sobs, apologizing all the while.

After the first month, Korra lost contact with Tenzin. Her quips with Mako and Bolin dissolved into something bitter on her tongue. She had promised Asami to video-chat every day they couldn’t meet in person, but one day she woke up with her body spread below in a deaden lump, and Korra couldn’t anymore. She had read online about this—how the significant others of quadriplegics often couldn’t handle the relationship and broke up with them. She couldn’t shake the thought. So one missed call was followed by one apology, then another came, then another—until finally she asked her mother to text Asami, _I need to talk to you_.

“Korra,” was the first thing Asami said. There was a lot of static on the other end. Korra tried not to think about Asami crying. “Korra, are you breaking up with me?”

The corners of her eyes burned. “I’m sorry, Asami,” she said. Her breaths were coming too fast for her weak lungs to handle. She needed to end the conversation soon. She couldn’t do this. She didn’t want to hear herself talk. She didn’t want to hear Asami.

“Please, Korra, this isn’t—” Asami took in a shuddering breath. The only time Korra had ever seen Asami cry was over her father. “Please, Korra. Don’t do this because you think I’ll push you away. I’m not— Korra, please, I love you, you know? I love you. I want to be with you. Don’t—don’t do this. _Korra_.”

“I’m sorry,” was all Korra could say again. “Thank you—thank you for everything.” Then she ended the call before she could say anything else.

By December, she had cut off everyone but her parents.

* * *

 

They never did find the boy Red or his mother with her fiery eyes. When Bolin and Mako gave the police a description of the woman, their searches came up blank. There was no boy named Red. But this wasn’t unexpected. Most of the people on the beach were visitors. In the chaos of the coast guards who had arrived to save Korra, it wasn’t difficult to believe that the distraught mother had left to seek help from someone else.

But Korra obsessed over the fact. Or, more importantly, she obsessed over every single detail of the day—every little choice she took to dive into the waves. Most of all she was haunted, over and over, by the memory of that shave-headed man. _Mercury in the water_ , he had said.

The thought of it was tantalizing: to couch her _stupid, stupid mistake_ in some mercury in the water. She rejected it at first. Then as her days drew longer, she asked her mother to look up reports of mercury in the small town’s waters. Her mother, startled and face clouded, did. When that turned up nothing, she asked her mother to call the town’s coast guard. That too amounted to nothing.

Finally Korra was ready to ask her mother to drive her down to the beach—if they could sample the water and turn it to a lab, then maybe Korra could know for sure— And as she made this last request the words were stoppered at her throat by the look on her mother’s face. And Korra knew. There was no mercury in the water.

She could not worry her mother with this sort of conspiracy theory. It could not be the crutch she would hold onto.

* * *

 

On the fifteenth of January, she was released to stay-at-home care when after an orthopedist pronounced her “well on the road toward recovery.” Korra never understood what he meant.

She had managed to wean off her dependence on the ventilator over the months. It was one of the only good things that happened at the Central Hospital, but she felt no triumph. Deep down, she was afraid she would remember being crushed under the waves and forget to breathe again.

She was given a sip-and-puff wheelchair, which allowed her to control which direction she moved depending on how hard she sipped and puffed on the wand of the chair. But it was hard going. She strayed from paths more often than not, and on one occasion nearly ran into traffic.

Sometimes she asked her mother not to lift her off her bed in the morning. Her mother would always refuse, and for that Korra was, in her calmer moments, grateful.

* * *

 

Korra told herself she wasn’t waiting, even as she parked her wheelchair at the doorway of her bedroom door at exactly 2:59pm. When the minute hand hit twelve, the doorbell rang, and soon Korra’s mother was letting in Asami—with her preternatural sense of time, as usual—to the dining room with warm greetings.

This routine had begun a couple of Sundays ago, right after the beginning of the Lunar New Year. The doorbell rang, just like now, except Korra had been in the kitchen at the time, reading through some bills her mother had asked her to make sense of. And Asami might have caught Korra then, had Korra not traced Asami’s outlines in the shadow against her family’s binds. Korra had given her mother a hasty “Tell her I’m not here— _please_ ,” and then directed her wheelchair back to her room.

When Korra’s mother had opened the door that first time, Asami greeted Korra’s mother with the same unfailing politeness Asami reserved for all adults. She asked if Korra was around. Korra’s mother hesitated, then told her Korra was getting some checkups at the central hospital with her father. When Asami responded, it was with the same, steady politeness—but frailer, her voice breaking off at the end. Korra’s mother must have sensed this too, because she brought Asami in for some tea and snacks and interrogated her about her grades, the colleges she was hoping to enter, and Future Industries—in that order. Then finally was she ready to release Asami.

Asami had returned the same time next week.

Now, Korra listened to Senna and Tonraq shove tea and cookies in front of Asami. Asami sounded flustered in her thanks. She liked visiting Korra’s parents even before they had gotten together, Korra remembered. It made sense. Future Industries was turning up a respectable profit margin even with a remarkably young CEO, so Asami didn’t exactly live in squalor. But Asami must have missed this. She had little memory of her own mother before she was murdered in a home invasion, and after what happened in their sophomore year it was unlikely she could ever bring herself to trust her father again. Korra felt a pang of guilt for almost denying Asami this too.

As they talked, Korra let Asami’s voice wash over her. Yes, Asami was doing fine in school; the recent literature paper was a toughie, but she had managed to power through. She wanted to wait to see her multivariable test results before making a comment on _that_ , though. Oh, and Future Industries was doing well, definitely—they would be releasing a line of affordable eco-friendly cars soon, and she had made major contributions to the piston and crankshaft designs, so she was excited to see how consumers would react to that. And yes, she was eating enough—and god, oh please, she really couldn’t handle anymore biscuits, though they really are delicious—

“Korra’s not available today either?” Asami asked.

There was a pause. “No, I’m sorry, dear,” Korra’s mother said. “Sometimes it’s too tiring for her to see other people.”

“No, no, I understand,” Asami said. “When you see her, please pass along my regards. And Mako’s and Bolin’s as well. They miss her—we all do.”

“Of course,” Tonraq said.

“You know, Asami,” said Senna, “if you want to visit us outside of this—scheduled time, we won’t stop you.”

Korra tensed.

“Oh,” Asami said. “Thank you, but I think that’s fine. I don’t—I don’t want to _force_ Korra to see me. I mean, I want to talk to her—I want to every day—but I want her to do it on her own terms. Meantime, I just want her to know that her friends still love her, and we’re always ready to welcome her back.”

“Thank you, Asami,” Korra’s mother said. “I’m glad—I’m glad Korra has such a good friend in you. A good friend, and— Well. Tonraq and I want you to know too that you’re like a daughter to us. So if not for Korra, then feel free to visit us old couple any time.”

“Oh god, I—” And Asami was trying to choke back tears, Korra could tell. “Oh god, thank you.”

They chatted for a little more, before Asami unloaded from her car a box of spare parts and an electric drill Tonraq had wanted to borrow a few weeks back. In turn, Korra’s parents were pushing into Asami’s arms bags of cookies and dishes covered with saran wrap—Korra had watched her mother frantically pack the food into a little tray earlier in the day. Then after more warm goodbyes and thanks, Asami left.

Korra waited there for five more minutes before she steered her way back to the kitchen. Her parents were sitting by the kitchen table—waiting for her.

“Hey,” Korra said weakly.

Her mother smiled. “She left a letter for you again.” She held up three sheets of paper in Asami’s small, neat handwriting.

“Just leave it on my lap,” Korra said. “I’ll take care of it.”

Her mother did. “That young lady cares for you very much, you know.”

Korra did.

* * *

 

_Dear Korra,_

_Hi— It’s another letter from me again, haha. How are you doing these days? Everyone at Temple misses you, you know. It’s been a lot of working and studying as usual for me. Of course, Mako & my rebellion against Ms. Kuvira is still ongoing, but I’m afraid she has already won over most of the class. There’s a chance we’ll convince Bolin to join our side again though after Kuvira almost made poor Opal cry the other day in lab… _

 

_…which I guess I already wrote in a text the other day. Speaking of which, I want to pass along Mako & Bolin’s regards. They’re still sending you emails and Facebook messages and texts like me but fewer of them, since we don’t know if you’re checking those. But I guess I don’t know if these letters ever get to you either... _

 

_...I visited my father the other day. They’re letting him fix up parts of the compound. He likes that—likes being able to use his hands again. He looks well. I don’t know if he can ever let go of that hatred he has—I try not to ask about that—but I genuinely think he regretted what he did two years ago. I know it’s wrong to trust him, but is it wrong if I want to be able to? Someday? I wish you can give me advice... it was always so easy to talk to you about these things..._

 

_...We miss you. We miss you every day, Korra. I miss you. I miss your jokes, the way you laugh. Your presence. Maybe I’m just a clingy girl who can’t let go of her ex, but I miss you, Korra. I miss my friend. If you’re not ready to see us yet, that’s fine, and we’ll try to respect that. But please, please, don’t shut us out..._

 

_...We’ll always be here for you. You have to believe us. We’ve been through so much—you’ve helped us so much—and we want to be here for you now. Please let us._

_Love,_ _  
_ _Asami_

* * *

 

After Korra’s father left for his job that morning and her mother went to pick up a few things at the grocer’s, Korra sat in front of her laptop. It took a few voice commands for the laptop to warm up, and a few more stumbles before she could open a text editor.

She looked down at her toes, then up. “Hey Asami—”

Words flashed into the textbox:

_Hi it’s all me_

Of course the software would get Asami’s name wrong. Korra had forgotten the delete command. She would ask her mother later.

She continued, “I’m sorry. It’s been a long time, I just—period.”

_I’m sorry it’s been a long time I just._

She would edit that out later too.

“So, I received your letter, and I just wanted to say that I’m really grateful that I—have you as a friend. Period.”

_so I received your letter and I just wanted to say and that I’m very grateful that I have you as a friend._

“I just don’t know if we can—I don’t know. Period. I mean, I’m sorry for the way things turned out but I just can’t—”

_I just don’t know if we can I don’t know. I mean I'm sorry for the way things turned out but I just can’t_

Korra gave the command to shut off the computer. There were vines clawing into her ribcage. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She led her wheelchair away, as though she needed to hide her tears from anyone else in the room.

She pretended to sleep when her mother came home an hour later. At dinner time, her mother shook her awake and asked her if she wanted to eat; she mumbled no, and her mother placed a soothing hand over Korra’s forehead. She went to the kitchen and returned in a moment to place something on Korra’s bedside table. Then she left again. When Korra opened her eyes, there was a bowl of soup and a straw by her lamp.

 _Call me if you want to eat something solid._ _  
_ _—Mom_

Korra woke up from a real nap some hours later, surprised that she had fallen asleep. Her stomach was growling like something crazy though, so she went over to her desk and picked up the straw between her teeth.

“ _This is about your health!_ ”

Korra was startled enough that the straw swung precariously to the left, nearly slipping from between her teeth. She almost didn’t recognize her mother’s voice, pitched as it was in such fury. Her parents exchanged more indiscernible words at a lower volume, until it seemed that her father couldn’t contain himself and said:

“ _Listen._ Senna. We can’t rely on the benevolence of our neighbors for everything.”

“You’re not young anymore.”

“I’m still strong. The shop is doing well enough, but with this extra money we can give Korra the care and attention she needs.”

“What about as a parent, Tonraq?”

“That’s why Korra needs you. That’s why you have to be the one to stay by her side.”

There was the heavy sound of a mug being set on the table. “I don’t like this.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Korra knew her father had been thinking of early retirement before Korra’s accident. It wasn’t that he disliked working in the family shop. He had chosen to inherit it, after all, when he left the north and married Senna the southern girl. But Korra knew he saw it as a means to support his family and take care of those he loved—rather than a passion, like his work at the shelter.

Korra was well on her way to earning for her family too. There had been polite invitations to meet with companies like Adidas and Visa and gift baskets from Dove halfway through Korra’s junior year. She had looked forward to being able to give back to her parents, who had put in so much already not only in lesson fees and gear but also in time: driving her back and forth the pool, between schools, to airports.

Now it was all for nothing.

“It’s late,” her mother said. Korra glanced at the clock; it was past ten. “I’m going to check up on her.”

Korra didn’t pretend to sleep when her mother entered the room this time. Senna looked at the half-empty bowl of soup, then at Korra. She smiled. “Do you want something to eat, dear?”

Korra lowered her head. “I’m fine. I’m ready to go to bed.”

“Alright,” her mother said.

First Korra’s mother changed her into pyjamas. After five months, Korra’s mother was able to do this with quick, practiced hands. Korra found herself settled by the touch of her soft pyjama collar at her neck despite everything. Then Korra let her push the wheelchair to the side of the bed. Senna lifted Korra to the mattress torso-first, then her legs, before laying Korra gently down the pillows.

Senna checked the bed for any potential lumps and fluffed up pillows. Korra took this chance to begin, “About what Dad was saying—”

“Oh,” Senna said, leaning back to her chair at Korra’s bedside.

“Mom.” She felt tears welling up again. Ah. She was tired of it. Could she ever stop crying? “Mom, this is all my fault. If I hadn’t dived into the sea like a stupid little kid, this never would’ve happened. I’m so—”

“Shh,” Senna said. It was barely a whisper of a sound, but it quieted Korra all the same. She reached forward to cup her daughter’s face. “Korra, don’t apologize. What happened was an accident. No one is blaming you, my daughter. There is too much guilt passing between all of us right now. You must forgive yourself so your father can, so your friends can. Do you understand?”

Korra let her eyes fall shut. “Yeah, Mom. I do. Thank you.”

“You are not a burden to us,” Senna said. “You are our daughter.”

Senna gave her one last kiss on the forehead before leaving the room. Korra let the tick-tock of the clock lull her to sleep.

* * *

 

_Dear Asami,_

_Hi. It’s been a long time. That was shitty of me._

_Last few months have been hell. There so many days when I didn't want to wake up. There are so many days when I just want to dive back to sleep even though that's where the nightmares are. Because at least nightmares aren't real. I guess I felt so alone in the world and I was always used to being the one to change things that I thought there's nowhere left for me when I can't charge in everything head first anymore._

_But this isn't an excuse. You and Mako and Bolin didn't deserve the way I treated you. You wanted to help me and I pushed you away. That's not right. Tenzin's mom Katara told me friendship isn't a one-way street. I can't expect you guys to reveal to me when you guys are most vulnerable and then lock myself away when I'm vulnerable. Even if I feel like I'm falling into the end of the world I have to let you guys drag me back._

_I read every email you guys sent me. I read every text. I read every one of the letters you gave my parents. They helped me get through every day even when I feel so guilty I can't breathe. I know the perfect strategy to get back at Kuvira you know. And I want to tell you that you should feel whatever the hell you feel around your dad. All the weird little mixed emotions. All the happiness and pain and hope. You've always been cautious enough for two of you. I know you won't let him to see you again. But you should also let your feelings guide you because he is your father and that relationship is built everything on love._

_My mom tells me to forgive myself and stop apologizing to people every single time I talk to them. And I will. But I will do this just one last time. I'm sorry Asami for how I ended things. I'm sorry you were hurt. I think we both know we can't go back to what we had, and I don't know if you'd want to anyway. I can't do it and I don't want to drag you into all the messiness that is my life now. But I'm selfish too I guess because I want to ask you to be my friend again. I miss you too. I've missed you for so long. I want to see you again._

_Anyway. Here's to hoping you still check this email._

_Love,_ _  
_ _Korra_

She read over the letter ten times, just to make sure she weeded out all of the errors and strange typos that speech-to-text software would create. There were so many more things she wanted to say, and at once she wanted to leave everything out. The two feelings warred inside her until she commanded “Send” before she could do anything else.

Three hours later, right as school ended, Korra received a new email.

 _Can I see you right now?_ _  
_ _\- Asami_

Korra swallowed. She replied:

 _Yes_.

* * *

 

In the minutes following her reply, Korra moved in front of the tall floor-to-ceiling mirror on her closet door. She let herself look.

Staying in a wheelchair for six months had changed the shape of her. She was rounder—that was undeniable. There were no hollows at her cheeks, and her stomach had filled out—those six packs were definitely gone now. The hard muscles that were bunched in her arms had smoothed over. Beneath her robes, she knew, her legs would have gotten thinner too.

Korra had first gotten serious about swimming in middle school. She had begun pushing herself harder in practices: dive farther, kick harder, tackle the water to forge a path for herself. One day one of her father’s sisters visited their apartment. She took one look at Korra and tutted—“I heard she’s swimming. Don’t let her go too far or you’ll have a little boy, Tonraq.” And in the days following Korra would look at herself and see that her shoulders were too wide, or her eyes were too sunken, as though the goggles had pushed them farther back into their sockets. It had taken no small amount of gentle soothing from her mother before Korra was willing to step back into the water again.

For months after the accident, Korra was afraid to look at herself in the mirror—she was wasting away, and she knew it, the fibers in her muscles peeling off and drying up. But now she knew she was wrong.

She wasn’t falling apart. She was filling into herself. She was settling into a new mold—a metamorphosis. And there was proof, wasn’t there? Right here in the mirror. Proof that she still existed. Proof that she was alive.

She was growing into herself.

Still, she had to remind herself that Asami had not seen her in four months. Asami would be shocked, probably. Korra looked different now. Korra would seem like a different person. And Korra _was_ a different person now. There was no changing that.

The doorbell rang. Korra’s mother shouted, “Coming!” The door jingled open. “Oh—oh, goodness, I—”

“Mom, it’s okay!” Korra shouted. Her voice came out softer than it would have a year ago. But that couldn’t be helped.

She commanded her wheelchair to the hallway. And there was Asami.

Her hair was different: parts of it tied back, with a strand framing her cheeks. Her face was worn in a way that Korra couldn’t quite describe at first, before Korra realized it: Asami looked more like an adult now. Like someone who was ready to be the face of an international corporation. Her makeup was flawless, as if perfected from practice—from crying.

“Hey,” Korra said weakly. Her mother had taken one look at Korra and ducked into the kitchen to give them privacy. “Long time no see.”

“Korra,” Asami said. Her eyes were wide. She was panting. Her lips softened into a smile. “Hi.”

There was no pity, confusion, or disgust. It was as though the chains around Korra’s throat, wrists, and legs were melting away. “It’s good to see you.”

“Can I hug you?” Asami asked.

Korra nodded. Asami’s arms came around her, her cheek pressed to Korra’s ear. She smelled like perfume and cinnamon. She was warm like a sunbathed valley. They stayed together like that for a long, long time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She always wanted to be too close to Asami.

“So,” Korra said, leaning her head back, “I heard Mako has a new admirer.”

Mako, who had been ribbing Bolin along with the others, groaned loudly from his place by the tree trunk. “Are we really?”

“ _ Ohh _ yeah,” Bolin jumped in immediately. “Big time.”

“His name is Wu Hou-Ting,” Asami said, low and conspiratorial. She sat by Korra’s foot, occasionally looking up to grin at Korra. “But most people just call him Prince Wu.”

“And why’s that?” Korra said. She couldn’t stop grinning back.

“It’s ’cause he’s an ass, that’s why,” Mako said. “He likes to go around asking people to admire his brooch— _ yeah _ , that’s how I know what a brooch is—and say it’s from a royal family in some remote country and he’s a distant heir.”

“And he’s also a freshman,” Bolin said, as a way of explanation.

“A  _ freshman _ ,” Asami repeated, but in a more scandalized tone. Mako’s face twitched.

“A freshman?” Korra gasped. “Mako, how could you?”

“Oh shut up.”

“First day of class? Asked Mako for directions once,” Bolin said, putting up one finger. “Mako guided him to the music hall all gentleman-like—”

“Worst decision of my  _ life _ .”

“—and since then he says he can’t go anywhere without Mako,” Bolin finished. “ ‘My handsome bodyguard!’ he would say. ‘He protects me from all danger!’ ”

“And I keep on telling him that’s why the sophomores pick on him!” Mako said. “If he weren’t such an obnoxious little bastard all the time then I wouldn’t have to save him from so many bullies!”

Korra was struggling not to laugh. “He sounds like quite a character.”

“He got in trouble with Ms. Kuvira once,” Asami noted daintily.

“Okay, to be fair,” Mako said, sitting up. “That time was actually because Kuvira—”

He stopped when he noticed they were all looking at him expectantly.

“Shut up,” he said sullenly, sinking onto his back again. The other three laughed.

“Mako has a  _ cru-ush _ ,” Korra and Bolin sang.

Underneath an open chemistry textbook, Mako groaned.

They had intended to study that afternoon, by the outdoor area of the park. But like all study sessions with good friends, their attempts were futile. Instead, they spent most of that afternoon catching up on things that had happened in the past six months.

And it wasn’t just for Korra’s benefit, she realized. She had picked up hints of it from Asami’s letters, but now she saw for sure: there was distance between her friends. They didn’t have as many shared adventures over the past six months as Korra thought they would. It seemed that, outside the only class they shared with each other—Ms. Kuvira’s chemistry class—they rarely talked to each other. Bolin had joined the science bowl team of all things. Mako had picked up a part-time job at the mechanic’s and was thinking of entering the police force. Asami, as she confessed in the letters, spent most of her time with Future Industries’ development team. It was as though they had been actively trying to avoid each other.

But they looked happy talking to each other now. Perhaps without Korra they hadn’t quite known what to say to each other—not even Mako and Bolin, who had been quietly growing into their own person apart from each other since Korra had known them. But now everything looked to be on the path to mending.

At one point in the afternoon, Korra laughed so hard that her history textbook slipped off the blanket on her lap. It landed on the grass with barely a sound. Mako and Bolin did not notice—they were too busy debating the ethics of classroom discipline re: Kuvira. Korra looked at the textbook, just sitting two meters away. Just two meters.

This was what Korra hated most about her body now—not the phantom pains, or the nightmares of drowning, or the pressure sores that would line the bottom of her feet if she and her parents weren’t careful enough. She was reliant on her parents and Asami for everything: to help her eat, do her hair, or even scratch her nose if she had an itch. The smallest things like this left her stuck, helpless. It drew her to a bad place, a place she didn’t want to be when she was around her friends.

While Korra was still figuring out the least obtrusive way to ask for help, the textbook was slid back on her lap. She looked up. Asami smiled as Korra fumbled with her thank-you.

“I didn’t say this before,” Asami said, “but I love what you did with your hair.”

Korra felt herself flush up to her ears. She had it cut to chin-length over the weekend—she had always wanted shorter hair, but this length was awkward to shove into a swim cap. “Th-thanks.” She glanced at the curls by Asami’s right ear. “You too.”

Asami looked ready to say something more, but right then Bolin interrupted to ask about a hypothetical question regarding a hypothetical girl named Zopal and a  _ definitely _ hypothetical scenario involving a choice between honor and grades in Ms. Kuvira’s chemistry class.

Korra settled for watching Asami.

The truth was—the truth was that even though Korra reached out to Asami first, she was the one Korra felt most distanced from still. Or maybe it wasn’t distance, but more like—more like she didn’t know where they stood. They weren’t  _ together _ -together anymore, that was for sure. And they had been in a relationship for only a little more than two months—it shouldn’t feel this weird to hang out with Asami again, right?

_ I love you _ , Asami had said. Korra wondered—

This was different from breaking up with Mako. She and Mako had never  _ fit _ right with each other. She had dated Mako because—well, he was extremely good-looking, as everyone else in their grade knew. But she had let herself date him because she liked him, and it was only later she realized that this “like” stemmed more from camaraderie than anything. She felt comfortable around him. She knew she could always depend on him. She fought with him in an attempt to shake out a prince charming inside him. She wanted to generate more feeling—the thrill that she had always imagined to be present in romantic love, a thrill that never came to being.

Asami, on the other hand, she had never felt wholly comfortable with. Over the years, Korra was by turns jealous, antagonistic, shy, and helpless around Asami. But most of all, Korra was hopelessly drawn. She always wanted to be too close to Asami. The only time she ever felt in equilibrium with Asami was after she had asked to speak to Asami by the juniper bushes near the science hall on the last day of junior year—and the glorious summer that followed. Now they were knocked out of equilibrium again, and whether it was toward a new balance or an explosion of teenage drama and heartache, Korra had no idea.

* * *

 

Asami was the only person outside of her parents whom Korra let push her wheelchair. So Korra let Asami walk her to and from home for check-ups at Central Hospital. It gave Senna much-needed breaks, and it gave Korra an excuse to spend time with Asami—as friends, of course. As friends.

On day, on the way back, they were gossiping about Opal’s brother Bataar Jr., who was getting engaged to Kuvira of all people. It made sense to Korra, then, why Bolin was trying to play nice with Kuvira: his chemistry teacher was potentially his girlfriend’s sister-in-law. It would also make Principal Lin Beifong both of their aunt-in-law. Asami and Korra tried to imagine a dinner with the three of them plus the rest of the Beifong family and laughed until they were afraid of falling over.

Then at a crosswalk, Asami said, “I want to show you something. We’d have to turn here though—is that fine?”

“Oh,” Korra said. It was a branch-off of the Republic City shopping district. “Sure.”

Korra expected Asami to lead them to one of the many boutique clothing stores lining the street. Instead, Asami led her to an unassuming cinderblock building at the end of the street, a sign proclaiming REPUBLIC CANINE COMPANION TRAINING CENTER.

“Is this—”

“I know you—have trouble with certain things. And get frustrated,” Asami said. “So I called earlier and asked them if we could come around and have a tour. And they said yes.”

Korra didn’t know what to say.

“Do you want to look inside?” Asami asked, anxious.

“Look inside a roomful of puppies?” Korra laughed. “Of course!”

They entered the air-conditioned interior of the training building. A receptionist greeted them both, and one of the volunteers scurried over to show them down the hall. There were wide rooms that contained trainers and smaller dogs—puppies, or young enough. Then there were rooms with more mature dogs, vests over their chest, and their owners: a young veteran with a missing arm, a balding older man in a wheelchair, a woman with a wavering cane, and others. Korra felt strangely gladdened by this sight.

At the end of the tour, the volunteer led them through the backdoor. It opened to a wide expanse of grassy land. The dogs here looked older, and the trainers commanded them more confidently. Orange cones occasionally dotted the landscape for the dogs to wind around or jump past.

Korra spotted a snowy Great Pyrenees to the left with its trainer. They were performing basic maneuvers, but every time the trainer awarded the dog with a treat, all the Great Pyrenees seemed to want is to lick its human’s face.

Korra jutted the chin over at them. “What’s up over there?”

“Oh that,” the volunteer said. “That’s Naga. She’s training to be a mobility assistance dog, actually. Not hard to see why—she’s strong. She’s shown that she can pull a wheelchair if she has to. But she’s a bit too affectionate sometimes, and that’s delaying the end of her training.”

“Does that mean she won’t graduate to a full service dog?” Asami asked.

“No, no. She’s obedient enough. And our director actually has great hopes for her—she was a rescued dog from an avalanche a couple of months back. But Naga’s the type of dog that a lot of energy and compassion to care for, so we’re still looking for the suitable human partner for her.”

“Huh,” Korra said, as Naga and her trainer trotted their way back to the center, toward them.

It was then that one of Korra’s sticks, which must have come loose of her chair, fell to the ground. Before Asami could reach for it, Naga walked politely up, clenched the stick between her teeth, and dropped it on Korra’s lap. Korra watched this in amazement. Naga sat expectantly on the ground. The trainer caught up to them and began to apologize, but Korra smiled.

“Good job, girl,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

Naga barked once and reached up to give Korra one long, wet stripe up her cheek as Asami, laughing, replaced the sanitized stick. Then Naga was called away, and Korra turned her head to the center volunteer.

“Well, I’m in. How can I sign up?” she asked. Then she thought back to her father guiltily. He had left for his first paid shift at the shelter last Saturday. “Um, if this is within a certain price range, of course.”

The volunteer was startled. “Oh no no no no, our services are completely free.”

“They run on charitable givings,” Asami said blandly. And Korra wanted to laugh, because she was sure now that Future Industries had been biting into a good chunk of those “charitable givings” for some time now, if she knew Asami at all. It was Asami’s way of helping Korra without giving her money directly. On another day Korra would maybe be discomforted, but all she felt now was gladness. She looked at Asami and smiled.

The volunteer continued, “As for the application process, there is a waiting list, of course. But we’ve heard about your story from local news, and we have the highest recommendations from Ms. Sato here.” Asami blushed. “So there’s a definite possibility that we can speed through some of the bureaucracy.” The volunteer smiled. “We would be honored to serve you, Korra.”

* * *

Naga was a bounding, leaping joy to the household. Korra and her family loved her instantly.

Naga woke Korra and Senna up every day at six o’clock sharp. After Senna secured Korra in her chair, Korra and Naga would head toward the Republic City central park. At Korra’s request, Asami had modified Korra’s wheelchair beyond standard settings, and more often than not Korra and Naga would race around the perimeter of the park at exhilarating speed. With a sling Bolin and Mako had fashioned for her, Korra could play fetch with Naga along the wide lawns stretched along the artificial pond. Naga gave Korra an obligatory nuzzle whenever the Great Pyrenees placed the ball carefully back into Korra’s sling.

Korra remembered again why she loved the outdoors, the neighborhood surrounding Temple High, and the people she met day-to-day. With Naga’s help to press buttons and open doors, the world outside her family’s apartment no longer seemed as charged against her as it had been. This was her city too. This had always been her city.

And when she rode into that suffocating miasma of bad thoughts—often after a physical or occupational therapy session—Naga was there, leaping to her hind legs to give Korra a fat, silly, comfortable lick to the face.

* * *

 

Korra visited Temple High on a Friday in May. It was the first time she returned since the accident.

She did so at Tenzin’s request, through a message relayed by Katara. Korra waited outside the boy’s locker rooms as students filed out in chirpy doubles or groups, done for the day and done for the week.

Korra had told Asami, Mako, and Bolin about this beforehand, and they would be meeting up with her afterwards, but she regretted that she didn’t ask them to accompany her now. Korra was aware of the curious gazes sliding over her body, then over Naga, who was snoozing by her side. These freshmen didn’t know her, but they might have recognized her from whatever rumors were spread throughout Temple High over the past year. Their eyes were filled with bald curiosity. The muscle at the back of Korra’s neck tensed.

Soon all the P.E. students had filed away, and Korra was left with the empty, languid stretch of an early summer afternoon. As the chair of the physical education department, Tenzin was usually busy with one student or another until at least half an hour after the last bell. Korra had forgotten that in her dread of the trip here. She had arrived too early. She tended to overdo things when she was nervous—Asami had told her that, back when they were dating. But Korra was fine with sitting here for a bit, she thought, surveying the trees along the center glade swaying in the sleepy summer heat.

She was about to doze off when a familiar voice wormed into her mind:

“...was  _ nothing _ . If Yang got himself DQ’d so easily in the 100m butterfly...”

Tahno. He was talking to a friend of his, it seemed, about the last swim meet the team had attended. They would be nearing the end of the spring season now. The thought of it brought back a familiar wave of longing. It had been so long since she was back in a pool, in water. She wouldn’t be able to swim again, likely for the rest of her life, but she missed the scene. She missed the feverish pitch of the air during a competition. She missed the cool serenity that water could offer in submersion. She missed being part of a team, working toward the end of a season, working toward gold.

“You know, he said he saw Korra near Temple High today,” Tahno’s friend said.

Korra lifted her head. Naga opened her eyes and glanced quizzically up at Korra.

“Oh really?” Tahno said, sounding unusually subdued.

“Yeah, an hour ago, at the administrator’s office.” A water bottle crinkled. “You know what  _ really  _ happened to her?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know what Coach said at the beginning of last year, and the whole school’s heard the segment RCTV did on her. But like, you knew her before, and people have been saying stuff—”

“I don’t know her,” Tahno said thinly. “You believe upperclassman chatter too easily, Ming.”

“Well,  _ I  _ heard that she broke her neck because she jumped into the sea in the middle of a storm. That’s what the actual ‘accident’ was. I mean, really, how dumb do you have to be...”

Tahno said nothing.

The boy named Ming continued, “I mean, I’m not a swimmer, but even  _ I _ know the difference between a pool and the  _ ocean _ . She must have been stupid or just plain arrogant—”

Korra wasn’t sure how it happened, but one moment she was outside the gym, and the next Naga was pushing the door open for her as she steered her wheelchair into the acrid air of the boys’ locker room, driving past the towering rows of high beige lockers. A couple of boys saw her and ducked behind locker doors, squawking indignantly. But she stopped only in front of the hallway leading to Tenzin’s office, where Tahno and his friend stood, stunned.

“Oh—oh!” Ming said. “Well. Y-you’re—”

Korra didn’t know whether he stuttered out of chagrin or the usual embarrassment people felt in front of a girl in a wheelchair. But her eyes were on Tahno. He looked even paler than usual, wilted, trying to shrink into himself.

She and Tahno were never friends. That was true. But they had parted ways on good terms after that disastrous freshman year meet and the whole Amon incident. She had been angry when she heard Ming’s words, but at the sight of them her anger melted away.

She turned to Ming. “You’re right,” she said. “I did jump into the sea during a storm. It was a dumb thing to do.”

A few months ago and she might have angrily followed up those words with, “I did it to save a kid,” but she found it unnecessary now. It was unnecessary to defend herself. She made a wrong turn that day in retrospect, but she made what she thought was the best decision with the information she did have. What happened to her was tragic, and she didn’t deserve it, but she could see now that she was not a tragedy. She still enjoyed the same things, loved the same people, and she was lucky enough that those same people loved her back. Her paralysis had drastically changed her life, but it had not become her life. She had, as her mother wanted, forgiven herself.

She would still give up almost anything to be able to move any of her limbs again. There would be times in the future where she hated herself, hated herself with a contempt people usually reserved for war criminals. But for now she was at peace.

Ming did not blush, but the shell of his ears burned red. Korra turned to Tahno, who looked away and, to her surprise, said, “I’m sorry.”

He was talking about Ming, she knew—not just offering the usual platitude. So she shook her head to tell him it was alright. Then she nodded at Tenzin’s office. “Now I’m going to talk to our coach. If you’ll excuse us.”

Tahno nodded sharply and pulled Ming out of the way. Korra drove her wheelchair past, Naga following.

Korra saw the back of Tenzin’s head first, the arrow tattoos that scared every freshman swimmer on the first day of practice clearly visible. Tenzin was berating two tall basketball players next to the trophy case, and something there caught her eye.

Her eyes skimmed over the national first-place trophy that the Temple High swim team had won last year. Then she was startled to find herself standing, smiling, in the end-of-season photo placed next to the gold cup. She had been captain, so in the picture she stood with Tenzin to the side, holding up the cup and possibly hooting. Korra smiled.

“Korra!” Tenzin opened his office door as the basketball players walked past them with their head down—shamed, probably.

“Tenzin,” she greeted, and accepted the hug he pulled her into.

“I thought you were going to wait outside,” he said, frowning. She almost laughed. Yep, this was Tenzin, disapproving already.

“I was, except the old man I was waiting for took  _ way  _ too long.”

Tenzin sighed. “Alright, that was my bad. I apologize. I’ll clear out some paperwork, then let’s go to the pool.” He smiled. “I wanted to show you something.”

The pool.

Korra’s breath caught.

Ten minutes later, Tenzin and Korra were strolling along the perimeter of the pool, and it was as though nothing had changed. The cement pavement was dotted with dark footprints that slowly evaporated under the sunlight. Swimmers hurried to leave the locker rooms and dive into the pool before the coaches yelled at them. Buoys and kickboards popped above the surface of the water here and there like marshmallows.

Naga bounced along Korra and Tenzin happily. Sometimes she marched forward to sniff a sandal or a stranded flipper, then look back panting, standing guard until Korra passed the obstacle. Some of the older swimmers recognized Korra and shouted out, “Oi, Captain!” or “Hey Korra!” and she would nod and smile back.

The entire team was divided into three groups based on skill level and grade. Korra had been on the competition-level team, but she was captain too, and between bringing peace to squabbling factions and breaking up fights, she would occasionally coach the less experienced members. Other swimmers from private school teams often pointed out how peculiar this was: an Olympic-level swimmer like her, wasting her time teaching. She always disagreed. She had gained her best insights about swim from watching people. Learning from her students. Because of this, most of the students here knew her, or knew of her from people who did, and when they stared she didn’t feel the same discomfort she had felt outside the locker room entrance. She was among her people here.

She and Tenzin watched swim practice for a while. The intermediate group was out on the tracks doing cardio. The frosh-soph group was getting started on laps, while the more experienced swimmers were doing some serious dolphin-kick drills. Korra could almost feel the burn in her abs just watching the latter group. When she spotted one of her former teammates slacking however, she yelled out, habitually, “Oi, Shengyen, get on with it!” There was a distant peal of laughter and soft jeers of  _ Cauuught. _ Shengyen shouted back an apology and then ducked into the water.

“So, have you finalized your plans for next semester?” Tenzin said, after he returned from his tangent about the new kickboards that the department had acquired.

“Oh, that.” Korra looked down at her arms. “Well, I talked to the people in the front office. And, you know, the principal knows me.” And  _ did _ Principal Beifong know her, Korra thought, flashing back to all the shit she and her friends had gotten up to in her three years at Temple. “They understand my situation,” she continued, “so they let me know I can come back to school next year and do senior year over again if I want.”

“Hm. And do you?”

“I—I’m not sure.”

“Oh. Is it an accommodations problem?” Tenzin asked, arching an eyebrow. “Because I  _ can _ talk to Lin, you know—”

Korra laughed, knowing that Tenzin’s and Lin Beifong’s talks often culminated in nasty relitigations of their torrid love affair twenty-some years back. “Nah, it’s not that. Temple’s disabled students program is pretty on-point. No, it’s—”

Bolin was a junior now, so he would still be in Temple next semester. But without Asami and Mako, plus another round of freshmen who wouldn’t know her, who would stare—she didn’t know. 

“Asami has been tutoring me in some of the classes I was supposed to take,” Korra said, smiling at the thought of Asami. “It’s been nice. I’m thinking if I do well enough I might just take the certification test and graduate without walking the stage. Then… Then we go from there.”

“You don’t plan on finishing school?”

“I mean. I’ve been— I don’t—” She sighed. “They keep on telling me about people who are fully paralyzed—like Stephen Hawking, you know—who go on and do amazing things. But I don’t know if that’s for me.”

Korra looked up at Tenzin. He had been an invaluable teacher to her. He was the one who had helped break her block freshman year with his weird meditative techniques. But it was more than just swim. Out of all the adults in school, he was the one she had gone to whenever she had trouble.

She still remembered asking for love advice during sophomore year when the whole Mako and Asami thing had reached peak messiness. He had strokes his beard and then, extremely uncomfortably, asked, “Who are you happier with?” She kind of regretted pushing all that teenage drama on him now, but whatever. It was practice for when Tenzin figured out his daughter and Kai were more than just good buddies.

If Tenzin blamed Korra for going MIA on her mentor of four years these past months, he didn’t show it. But Korra still felt guilty.

“Listen, Tenzin,” she said. “For the radio silence this past year—I’m sorry. I should’ve kept in touch.”

“Thank you, Korra,” he said, “but you needn’t apologize. I understand how it might’ve been difficult, since—well.” He nodded at the pool. “And I’m after all a swim coach.”

“Yeah. I expected this to be more difficult.”

Korra could felt the longing pull at her like the tide. Most likely, her desire to swim again, to find that freedom among the waters, would never go away. But she could press that longing to something sweeter rather than let it sour.

“To be honest, this feels like returning home,” she admitted. “I missed this. I’m glad you persuaded me to stay on the team in sophomore year when North Tribe Aquatics was offering me that ‘Olympic-level program.’ You taught me that a team was a team, even if swim is an individual sport. And I think I was a better swimmer for it, thanks to you.”

Tenzin grunted, as though clearing his throat. “Well, we couldn’t let North Tribe poach our best athlete, now could we?”

“Beating them at joint practices  _ was _ pretty satisfying too.”

Tenzin laughed. “Well, I’m glad to hear what you’re saying. I actually have to ask something else of you along these lines.”

Korra raised an eyebrow at him. “Alright.”

“Coach Shinobi is leaving from Temple High next semester to go back to radio,” Tenzin said, nodding toward the man who was sitting among the lower benches. “So we need to find a replacement. I’ve been talking to the other assistant coaches—they all remember you, of course. And when I suggested that we take you on as an assistant coach, they were all enthusiastically supportive.”

Korra didn’t fully process what he said at first.

Then she understood.

“You’re—you’re offering me a job?”

“If you’re willing to take it,” Tenzin said seriously. “It’s a lot of paperwork and phone calls most of the time, like any other job. You’ll be starting off on a slim salary, and maybe after two years they’d give you a small raise. There’s a lot of traveling on busses in meet season. And you’d have to yell at the students all the time to keep them in line...”

And kids could be cruel, she thought—maybe not this batch, but the next, or a bad egg in the midst of one of them.

And she would have to return to Temple and endure rumors and comparisons to her past self every single day.

And she would be around water all the time.

But these thoughts only tugged harder at the hope in her heart. Tugged her higher.

“But what if,” she said, trying to shake the hope away, “what if I need to demonstrate a move to one of the students? Like if I need to show them how their arms aren’t straight enough during butterfly—”

“Then you can ask one of the swimmers to demonstrate, or ask me or one of the other coaches,” Tenzin said firmly. “You needn’t worry about your qualifications. We’ve all seen you tutor other students. You have a great eye on form and a way with the students. And that’s all we need to see.”

Korra wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. She wanted to embrace Tenzin—thought she would be able to, just from the sheer joy.

“Can I—can I think about it?”

And she meant the question. Did she have permission to? Was that something she could do? She should quash the foolish, ballooning fantasies that was already dragging her off the earth. But she didn’t want to.

Tenzin smiled kindly. “Of course, Korra. Take all the time you need.”

* * *

 

Asami saw her first and pushed herself off the school fence. Mako and Bolin lifted their arms in greeting.

“How did it go?” Asami asked.

“It was great.” Korra grinned. “I’ll tell you guys on the way to Swamp Munches.”

And she did, the whole of it, starting with her journey to Temple and the people she saw, and ending with her conversation with Tenzin. Her friends laughed and jeered and yelped at all the appropriate moments, and she loved them for it.

Korra felt unbelievably, hopelessly happy at the moment, in a way she hadn’t been for months. It was the sort of happiness that roared through her heart and twisted open every handle, pulled apart every knotted twine. Everything was open. Every wonderful thing in the world was magnified, each a string of melody in a great orchestra, the goodness of them palpable like soft grains against her cheek. And she felt like she could do anything like this: catch missiles and turn them into stars, skate across a rainbow, sing out her soul, fumble her way into love.

But she was in love.

She looked back at Asami, who was laughing at something Bolin had said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Korra had been in love for some time now.

And here the happiness chilled and percolated down her throat, gathering in a strange place between the lock of her clavicle and the pit of her belly. Time slowed, stopped, rebounded, and spun madly. Korra wanted to cup Asami by the cheek and pull her gently down. Kiss her, like she had done so many times before.

She couldn’t. And it was not only a physical inability. She still remembered Asami’s broken voice when she had said, “Don’t do this.  _ Korra _ .” Asami didn’t plead. But Korra pushed her there.

What right did Korra have to tell Asami now that she loved her? What right did she have to demand anything of Asami when Asami had given her so much already? Korra saw Asami’s hesitations too. The little catches in Asami’s voice whenever Korra found herself verging in on flirting with her. The barely-there pauses when Asami would touch Korra—whether it was to smooth her hair back or touch her shoulder. She had hurt Asami, and hurt her deeply. The way Korra had broken off like that, over the phone, then eliminated all contact—that hurt wasn’t something someone would just recover from.

“ _ Korra, please, I love you, you know? I love you. I want to be with you. _ ”

Korra did too. She had always. She was starting to think she always would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line “She was reliant on her parents and Asami for everything: to help her eat, do her hair, or even scratch her nose if she had an itch” was copied directly from the original prompt. I thought it was concise enough, and y’all know my sentences get too wrapped in themselves sometimes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Graduation was a tight and hurried affair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last full chapter. The next is an epilogue of ~800 words.

“You know, I wonder if coaches haze,” Bolin said, as he took the balloon from between Korra’s teeth and tied up the end. A few months ago, she wouldn’t have been able to blow a balloon at all, she thought. But now she could.

“Haze who?” she asked.

“Each other, ’course,” Bolin said, giving Korra another balloon to blow. He went back to the poster, which was spread out across the dining table and pinned in four corners by Korra’s mother’s vases. “Like, what if the PE department is just one giant frat and Tenzin is secretly top frat guy? The head honcho? The one who pushes all the pledges into a room and makes them honk like a donkey—”

“You  _ really _ have been watching too many American movies,” Korra said, laughing. “And I’m not joining the PE department. I’m just going to be an assistant coach.”

“But tons of coaches are PE teachers too,” Bolin said musingly. Then his face paled. “What if you get recruited as a PE teacher in a couple of years?”

Korra shook the now-full balloon between her teeth a couple of times for Bolin to take away, then said, “I mean, maybe? Tenzin mentioned that as a possibility.”

“Oh god,” Bolin said, giving Korra another balloon without looking. “But  _ what if _ you do? Then you’d have to work under Principal Beifong. And she’s Opal’s aunt. What if she doesn’t approve of my relationship with Opal? What if she forces you to choose between me and your job as an effort to tear apart me and Opal—”

“ _ Mmph-mm _ ,” Korra said, with the inflated balloon between her teeth, mostly to shut Bolin up. He took it. “You know, I feel like you’re channeling all your anxieties about Asami and Mako graduating into—everything else.”

“How can you  _ not _ ?” Bolin wailed. Naga woke up from her nap, saw that it was just Bolin, and returned to sleep. “In a week they’d be  _ gone _ and there’s a chance that we won’t  _ ever _ see them ever a _ gain _ .”

“Mako’s literally your brother,” Korra pointed out. “Future Industries is half an hour’s walk from Temple High.”

“It won’t be the same. We wouldn’t be able to scheme against teachers like we used to.” He sighed tragically. “Thank god you’re coming back, at least.”

“You betcha. We still have to test how well this baby can skid down Main Hall,” she said, tilting her head toward her chair.

Mako and Asami graduating—if she was honest with herself, she knew what Bolin meant. In a strange way she had been framing her own stay away from school as an extended summer break. Not in the sense that it was  _ easy _ in any way, but that this new course of events was temporary, and soon she would return to the days of attending classes side-by-side with the three of her closest friends. Eating lunch together. Fighting battles between acing a literature test. But with Mako and Asami graduating, those days were long over, and Korra didn’t know how she felt about that.

Bolin blinked at the posters that they were painting with Mako’s and Asami’s names and faces. “You sure you don’t want to take over this? With your—” he gestured toward his face, “—teeth—drawing—thing.”

Korra raised an eyebrow. “Mouth painting? Well, I’m still trying to perfect that,” she said. “We quads don’t just start getting superpowers the moment we become paralyzed, you know.”

Bolin chuckled, a little embarrassed. “Yeah.”

“At this rate I’m afraid that my writing skills are still messy enough that yours are neater,” Korra said, grinning. “But give me a couple of months.”

“That’s fine. I don’t need neat handwriting,” Bolin said. “My main form of expression is, after all—” he spun a marker between his fingers, uncapped the pen with his teeth, and wagged his eyebrows twice, “—art.”

As Korra laughed, her cell phone rang. The screen flashed with the caller: BABE.

“ _ Ooh _ ,” came Bolin’s voice, because he was a sneaky bastard, “damn, ‘Babe’? Korra, I didn’t know you got a—”

Korra felt her face burning as she tapped her mouth stick on the CONNECT button on her phone. The call came through, and she tapped “speaker.”

“Hey Korra,” Asami said from the other end.

Bolin, who had been practically jumping across the room with excitement, froze.

Korra wanted to explain to him it was nothing like that. She had recently unearthed this phone after leaving the house regularly again, and she hadn’t gotten around changing Asami’s name in her contacts. But she couldn’t say anything with Asami just on the other line. So she put away the stick and said, “Hey you too.”

“What are you up to?” 

“Oh, just with—”

Bolin made slicing “not me” gestures across his throat. Oh right. They needed to keep this secret to surprise Asami and Mako.

“—Naga. You know. Hanging around the apartment, chilling. Sunday TV shows are great.” They were not. In fact, Korra kind of hated them now, after watching five months’ of it while she had been cooped up in the apartment.

“Great. I’m just calling to check that we’re still good for Friday evening,” Asami said. “Dinner at White Lotus. I was going to pass by later to make a reservation in person.”

“Of course,” Korra said. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. I love the food there.”

Asami chuckled, and Korra felt that familiar rush of sweetness through her veins. Then there was a pause, a mark of hesitation. “You know, I know we only planned it between the two of us—but really feel free to ask other people too. Mako and Bolin can’t make it because it’s their ‘bro time,’ of course, but maybe you know someone on the swim team who might want to. I mean, it’s not a date.”

“No no no, of course not,” Korra said quickly. “I mean, of course it’s not a date. Because we’re not, uh, together. Yeah. And you too, you know.”

“Pardon?”

“Oh, you know. If you want. To invite someone. If you want to invite someone from Futures, you know.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare,” Asami said. Then, in a whisper, she added, “I mean, I’m surrounded by all these fifty- and sixty-year-old men—you know, hired back in Dad’s day. And they all call me ‘miss’ and ‘ma’am.’ I can’t imagine holding a casual conversation with any one of them.”

Korra laughed. “You’re still at the office?”

“Yeah,” Asami sighed. “It looks like it’s going to be a long night again. One of the test runs for the new model didn’t go so well—the car skidded off-track. I’m thinking it’s because one of the technicians was sloppy when they screwed the wheel back on earlier today. We found a couple of extra screws near the repair center. But it doesn’t matter. We have to be sure. This’ll be something people put their children in. Safety’s the most important thing.”

Korra could just picture it: Asami pacing along the Future Industries test tracks, fierce-eyed, wading through engineers and employees to pinpoint the point of damage and return with a battle plan. Old men or not, Korra didn’t envy the employees in Future Industries at the moment.

“Hey, that’s cool,” Korra said. “But don’t overwork yourself, okay? If anything, call me again.” Her voice dipped low. “I’ve been told that I’m a fun distraction.”

Asami’s laugh was the soft, solid clack of a jade bracelet. “I will.”

When they ended the call some minutes later, Korra found Bolin—she had totally forgotten about him—staring at her. His index finger and thumb framed the bottom of his chin, contemplative.

“What?” Korra said defensively.

“First of all, ‘bro time’ is the temple on which the broship of me and my best bro Mako rests,” Bolin said reproachfully. Then his face changed, softened into something like pity. “Korra, are you okay?”

“Of course,” Korra said. She was asked that question so often, it was her automatic response.

“Korra.” Bolin sat down next to her and looked up with pleading eyes. Korra once told Asami that half the reason she felt so protective of Bolin was those puppy-dog eyes, probably. “Are you and Asami okay?”

“Me and—”

And here Bolin found a way past her defenses. Korra didn’t have an automatic response to that question. This, combined with his puppy eyes, was disarming.

She tried going for a laugh. “What are you saying, Bolin? We’re friends. We’re fine. Of course we’re— We’re fine.”

“Korra—”

“We’re good,” she said firmly.

“Okay,” Bolin said.

They returned to blowing balloons and scribbling into posters for a few minutes, before he began again:

“When I had problems with Opal in April, you and Asami and Mako gave me great advice,” he said. “So I just want you to know you can talk to me too about anything going on with—you know. Each other.”

Korra remembered her freshman year and Bolin’s eighth grade. The poor guy had been caught right in the middle of a three-way battlefield between his supposedly mature high school friends. The fact that he was offering now to put himself through it again was touching.

“Thank you,” she said. “You’re a good kid, Bolin.”

He looked at her carefully, nodded to himself, and began grumbling about “one year younger and you’re the baby of the group forever.” Korra wanted to ruffle his hair.

* * *

Korra hated physical therapy. The quad exercises, the stim bike that paddled her legs, and empty words of encouragement were often enough to make her physically sick from frustration and in tears. She didn’t see the point, sometimes, of learning to balance herself when she didn’t have use of her back muscles anyway and probably wouldn’t ever leave the wheelchair on her own. But as she left the lobby of the clinic this time around, she was greeted face-to-face by Mako, and she felt some of the weight lift.

“How’re you?” Mako asked, scratching the back of his head. His arms still bore thin streaks of grease; he must have just returned from the garage. Naga recognized him and barked once.

“Good,” she lied—but only a little. “Got your text.”

He gestured toward the handles on her wheelchair in inquiry. She considered it for a moment—just a moment—before nodding.

“Thanks for letting me tag along,” he said, as Korra felt him pushing her chair. Naga trotted along, diligent as always. “Bolin really needs to be careful with his things.”

“This is, what, the third time he lost his phone?”

She heard Mako snort behind her. “Fifth. At least it’s at your place this time instead of—of the janitor’s closet.”

She burst into laughter at the memory. God, Bolin the horndog out of the four of them—who could’ve guessed?

They reminisced like this out loud, back and forth, until they covered all of freshman year and the Unalaq incident in their sophomore year. Then a thought struck Korra:

“Honestly, tell me. Was it weird for you when me and Asami first got together?”

She didn’t expect Mako to answer the question seriously, but his expression grew thoughtful.

“A little,” he said.

“Just a little?” Korra said, because she couldn’t help herself.

Mako’s lips twitched as though he was holding back a laugh. “No, yeah, a lot. Mostly because I didn’t know if you guys would still... want me around, you know?”

This was news to Korra. She opened her mouth to say of course they did—he was part of their  _ team _ , their four-man squad—but he shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I learned to get over myself and be happy for you guys. And that was actually a lot easier to do than I thought.”

Korra returned her gaze to the road ahead. Naga swung her head back quizzically. “Yeah. Thank you for that.”

Mako didn’t say anything for a while, and Korra was half-hoping he wouldn’t voice his next thoughts, because she knew— But he continued anyway, “You guys were  _ right _ for each other, you know? That’s what made it easy. Anyone could see it.” They stopped at a red light. “Anyone can see it now.”

Korra forced herself to put on a cheerful tone as she asked, “Did Bolin set you up for this? You two—always so concerned for me.”

“Bolin mentioned that he overheard something between you and Asami that had him… worried,” Mako said. “But he didn’t tell me to say this. He didn’t tell me to say this because anyone who knows you—anyone who knows the two of you—can tell you still like each other.  _ Love _ each other.”

“She doesn’t—”

“She does.” Korra looked at Mako. He was smiling sadly down at her. “Trust me, she does.”

The traffic light blinked green.

After they crossed the street, Mako began again, voice heavy, “Me and Asami—we’re graduating. You know I’ll stay by you and Bolin’s side no matter what. And it’s not that Asami wouldn’t. But she’s—stubborn. Like you. Like all of us. And self-sacrificing.”

Korra kept her eyes on Naga.

“If you dance around each other like this... It’ll be painful for both of you,” Mako said. “And she’ll see that it’s painful for you, and then maybe it’d take weeks, or months, or years, but she would peel herself away from us—”

And she would, Korra realized, achingly. Asami would see that Korra was happier now, with friends, and she would cede her claim on their friendship. She’d think that it was either her or Korra, and since Korra was older friends with Bolin and Mako, Asami would be the one who needed to go.

Which was bullshit, Korra thought, furiously. Absolute bullshit. Asami was as much a friend to either of them as Korra was. But Korra didn’t know if Asami believed that. Asami had admitted that she had no close friends before Korra and Mako and Bolin. Then the other friends she did have turned away from her when Hiroshi Sato was arrested for illegal weapons manufacturing. Maybe Asami was inured to loneliness. Maybe she had convinced herself she was.

“She can’t,” Korra said.

“But she might. And I don’t want to see that happen,” Mako said firmly.

“You don’t understand,” Korra said painfully, like she was dragging out the words from the depths of her throat. “I made this promise to myself when I contacted her again, back in February. I promised if I came back to her life, I won’t hurt her. Mako, I don’t know if she ever told you, but our relationship didn’t end well.  _ I  _ didn’t end it on a good note.”

“You weren’t in a good state of mind.”

“I still cut her off,” she told him. “Cut all of you off.”

Mako had nothing to say to that. He would remember, of course, and it must have pained him too, no matter how many apologies were exchanged.

“I can tell I’ve burned her badly,” Korra said. “I don’t know if she’d trust me at that level ever again.”

Another stretch of silence.

“Even if there was anything to forgive,” Mako said, “I think she’s already forgiven you. I think she isn’t afraid of you. She’s just waiting for you. And if you don’t seize the moment, you might just lose her again.”

“What if she hasn’t forgiven me?”

“Then show her she can trust you,” Mako said. “I’ll help you. Bolin, too.”

“Roses, choir, the whole shebang?”

“The whole shebang,” Mako agreed somberly.

Korra couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. “Thanks.”

And this was why she would always hold a soft spot for Mako, she thought. He and Bolin both. Her best friends.

“How’s Wu doing?” Korra asked, figuring they had talked enough about her for the day. The last she’d heard, Wu had met Mako and Bolin’s grandmother, who had adopted him instantly. “And I swear I’m not teasing you this time. Mostly.”

Mako made a face at her, but then began to recount a tale in which Wu protected a group of elementary school students from some vicious middle-schoolers. In it, Wu almost seemed like the prince he claimed to be, and Mako sounded almost fond.

* * *

Graduation was a tight and hurried affair. Most of the seniors would be taking their college entrance exams in a few days and rarely spared a thought for this day until they were dressed in robes and handed their diplomas; only then did a few cry, much to Principal Beifong’s annoyance. Bolin and Naga held up the posters they had made for Asami and Mako, while Korra screamed louder than an entire cheer squad when the two of them walked the stage.

Neither Asami nor Mako was taking the entrance exam, of course. Mako was entering the police academy with several recommendations from Principal Beifong—likely at Opal’s asking. Asami was taking an indefinite number of gap years before college to focus on Future Industries. It was odd that Temple High’s valedictorians wouldn’t be heading for college, and Korra knew from Mako that their more jealous classmates had been tutting at this fact. Asami seemed to find this amusing, and she remarked upon it as much in her valedictorian speech. Nonetheless she was able to reduce most of them into another round of bawling.

After the ceremony, after all the hugs and hand-shaking and the mandatory dinner at Swamp Munches, Korra and Bolin kidnapped the two fresh graduates and dumped them at Varrick’s mansion, where Varrick and Zhu Li and dozens of their other mutual friends burst from behind counters and the sofa for a shout of  _ Surprise! _ that neighbors three streets down could hear. Then, of course, the party began.

* * *

Korra realized she wasn’t much for parties anymore after an hour of people trying to feed her alcohol—she refused all of them—and uncomfortably trying to engage her in dance. So when she saw that Mako had settled into talking to Wu near the first-floor kitchen, and Asami was surrounded by a gaggle of awestruck underclassmen, she went to the back of the house. A couple of students rushed out from behind the Varrick-shaped hedges when Naga pulled open the back door. One of them might have been Bolin, which meant the other might have been Opal, but Korra wasn’t going to think too much about that.

She asked Naga to sit in the house. Naga did so reluctantly, after a lot of whining and droopy-eyed looks. Then Korra steered her wheelchair to the edge of the wooden deck.

The night sky was clear. Cicadas chirped. Fireflies weaved among rose bushes and the shuffling oak trees. Korra breathed in, breathed out, and let the air siphon off all the sweat and fear and bad feelings from her skin. She felt light here. She could stay for a couple of hours, she thought, before it was a suitable time to head home.

Some time later the door behind her was pulled open, and Korra let the back of her head hit her headrest. Of course silence was hard to come by in Varrick’s house.

“Korra?”

Her heart jumped.

Korra wheeled around. “Asami.”

Asami’s slender fingers rested on the lip of the glass door. They caught rays of the yellow backyard light and casted strands of shadows down her face.

“Hey,” she said. “Sorry, am I... interrupting anything?”

“No, no,” Korra said. “How come you’re leaving the house? It’s  _ your _ party after all.”

Asami laughed as she came to sit next to Korra. “Thank you for that, by the way. It was nice seeing everyone again—especially Zhu Li and Varrick, since they’ve been off to college. I just thought it’s better that the party focus on them again, since they’re engaged and all—”

“ _ What? _ ”

“Oh my god, you weren’t there?” Asami said, eyes wide.

“No,” Korra said. “Tell me everything.”

Varrick and Zhu Li, who had acquired both college students’ appetite for alcohol and their stupidity, had announced their engagement halfway through karaoke. After hugging them both in congratulations, Asami had escaped people who nose-dived in to similarly congratulate the happy couple.

“God, I can’t believe it. Engaged,” Korra said. Varrick and Zhu Li were only three years older: seniors when they were freshman. “I should go and tell them—”

“No point,” Asami said, sighing. “I tried to go back just now, and they were singing the national anthem, arm-in-arm.” She leveled a look at Korra. “Even Zhu Li was singing.”

They were truly sloshed, then.

“I’m happy for them,” Korra said. “They really do deserve each other.”

“And they’ve been together forever, you know? Since before they got into Temple, I think,” said Asami, combing back a strand of hair. It curled around the curve of Asami’s ear.

“Yeah,” Korra said, distracted.

“Don’t you remember? They were voted ‘Most Likely to Elope to Las Vegas or Start World War III Together.’” Asami’s head was tilted to the night sky. Korra knew the angle was all wrong, but she thought she could see stars in Asami’s eyes, just like in all those cheesy love songs. “They had that big fight last year too. But we always knew they would be together. I mean, with the two of them, there’s nothing they can’t overcome. I looked at them at that party near the end of summer, and I thought—”

Asami stopped, and Korra was brought back to earth.

They had been just over that hedge in the east. It seemed like a decade ago.

Their eyes met.

“I should be leaving,” Asami said abruptly. “I—I mean. I have to wake up early tomorrow, you know? For Future Industries. Korra. It’s been nice, seeing you—I’ll see you soon, I mean.” She stood. “I’ll get going now.”

This was what Mako was saying, Korra realized, suddenly panicked. This was Asami drawing away.

“Wait!”

Asami faced Korra.

When Korra couldn’t think of anything to say, Asami laid a hand on the back of Korra’s chair and asked, “What is it?”

“What do you want us to be to each other?”

The words were drawn out of her without meaning, quick and sharp, without sanding off any of their sharper angles. Asami reacted in the worst possible way: face paling, smile gone. She withdrew her hand and tucked her fingers beneath her armpits.

Asami opened her mouth but then swallowed what she had been about to say. She casted her eyes away. She didn’t speak.

Korra realized then that how cruel her question had been. How horrible it was that she had thrown it at Asami like that, with nothing she could hold onto.

_ Show her she can trust you. _

Questions like those were demands for answers, not the offers of choice. She couldn’t rely on Asami to give her everything. Not like this.

So Korra took a deep breath and, ignoring the roiling in her gut, said, “I love you.”

Asami’s breath halted, her lips parting.

“I’m sorry for not saying this before,” Korra said. She forced herself to look into Asami’s eyes. “And I wonder if you’ll hate me for saying this. But I do. I love you. I only wish I told you sooner. And I wanted you to know that not—not because it should change anything between us, but that—that if you’ll have me,” her throat constricted, and she briefly could not speak, “I want to be with you too. And if you don’t, I understand, because I hurt you, and this—” this lifetime of caretaking, these cycles of therapy, this inability to reach out and  _ touch _ , “this—liability was not what you signed up for. And I’d get it, I really do. But I just—I just want you to know that. This is how I stand. And nothing can change, if you don’t want to.”

Asami stood so still, and what little hope Korra had did a dive, plunging right down her esophagus into her stomach. Mako was wrong, and she knew it—or maybe Asami never forgave her—and either way Korra messed it all up, didn’t she? She had gone ahead and done it, trampled over their friendship like she had ruined everything else—

“You’re not a liability,” Asami said fiercely. She placed a hand on Korra’s armrest and leaned down. “You’re not. You’re Korra. You’re—”

Now Korra was the one speechless.

“Korra?” Asami said.

Korra stared into her light green eyes. “Yeah?”

“Can I kiss you?”

Kiss her?

Korra closed her eyes. She thought her heart had never beat in her body before this moment, that this was her reincarnated, born in new skin. She opened her eyes, and it was as though all of the broken glass Korra had been looking through were knocked down and swept away, and there were no more fragments or twists of Asami’s visage. Korra saw all of Asami. There was nothing blocking their way.

“Yeah,” Korra whispered back, fiercely. “ _ Yes _ .”

Asami pressed her lips against Korra’s.

“I still love you,” Asami said, when she drew away. She chuckled wetly. She was crying. They were both crying. “I love you too.”

Korra was the one to lean forward next time.

There might have been more exchanges of love. There might have been more kisses. They might have talked deep into the night, making promises about more things than they could control, as teenagers tended to do.

But that was fine. They were young. They would have time to learn.


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They went on a vacation, just the two of them and Naga.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Again, mild depictions of depression relapsing.

Korra had been the one to suggest the idea, but she was thinking of a one-day road trip down to the woodland coast of the west. When Asami asked her why two eighteen-year-olds with access to a car and secure funds shouldn’t disappear into the woods for a couple of weeks, Korra had gone silent.

Then she said, “You’d have to take care of me.”

“I will,” Asami said then. “If you want me to.”

So Korra let her. She let Senna show Asami how to dress Korra, clean Korra, check Korra for sores, empty the urinary bag, transfer her to and from a wheelchair, and work with Naga when necessary. Asami memorized the timetable for Korra’s medications and made a checklist of all of the components of Korra’s chair. She brought in a prototype of a self-adjusting ramp in case they entered areas that weren’t accessible even with the upgrades Asami had grafted into Korra’s chair. Asami never said a word. Her intentions were shown to Korra:  _ Don’t be afraid of me. I’m serious about this. I’ll be here. _ Then Asami placed the company in the temporary trust of her most trusted engineer, and it was done.

They went on a vacation, just the two of them and Naga. Asami still drove graceful and fast across the sharp bends of the United Republic terrain, and Korra still sang off-key at the trashiest pop songs that came on the radio. They made out at rest stops and gossiped unrepentantly. During breaks, Asami curled up to her girlfriend’s side and rested her head against Korra’s.

They moved from town to town by the hour, choosing the next destination at twists of whimsies, and settled in when they were tired. There were sweet crackers to try at local markets, and hills to conquer, and a whole country to explore. They were together, there was youth to spend, and that was what mattered.

It wasn’t easy all the time; on some days, it wasn’t easy most of the time. In their second week, Korra picked a small beach town standing between a forest and the sea. Asami had quieted, but she followed the path Korra had traced out on the map. It wasn’t until they found an inn and retired to bed for the day that the pinching sensation at the back of Korra’s neck slid down her sternum and pressed against the veins of her heart. She didn’t tell Asami. Naga whined, but she shushed her. She drifted in and out of sleep.

At five she was completely awake and feeling like shit. At a quarter past five she had an idea. At twenty-three past five she turned to Asami.

“Hey, babe?” she whispered.

“Hm?” Asami said, a soft sound.

“I want to go to the beach,” Korra said. “If you’re up for it.”

Asami’s eyes opened. She looked at Korra carefully, nodded once, and got up.

This beach was nothing like the one where Korra had her accident. Sand and pebbles mixed freely by the lapping waves. Instead of old surfboards lining the bay, there were molding wooden crates and the occasional fishermen, fiddling at hooks or fixing their nets. Asami and Korra nodded to them, and the old men nodded back. Sometimes they stared at Korra’s wheelchair and the giant dog by their side; but more often they smiled back and went back to business.

They found a beautiful little cove a few miles away and rested there. Asami’s eyes were wide and alive as she took in the shimmering sun in the distance. Korra was content to sit and enjoy the scene until she realized she wasn’t anymore. So she asked Asami.

“You sure?” Asami said, afterwards.

“Yeah.”

This was more difficult than helping Korra into a bed: there was a greater drop between the chair and the ground. But Naga was there to act as support, and after painstaking minutes Asami transferred Korra from the chair to Naga’s back, then to the sand. The foamy sea lapped at Korra’s exposed toes.

A month ago, during a physical therapy session, Korra moved her right big toe a quarter of a centimeter to her left. It was the first sign of progress she had in almost a year. There hadn’t been a repeat performance yet, but Korra had been training herself in that fine line of appreciating what she had and daring to hope for more, and she was getting better at it.

The air nipped at her cheeks, but it was warmed by the faint fire of the distant dawn. Water rushed in, slipping away, making way of the solidity of the sand—of earth. Asami kneeled down next to Korra, and Korra turned her head to catch a kiss. Together, they watched the sun rise.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve said this in the opening note, but please don’t hesitate to point out inaccuracies in the story. I can’t promise to fix them all to exact specifications, since I’m pretty time-constrained always, but I’ll try my best.
> 
> My chief thanks goes to wombatking, not only for participating in FTH but also for giving me this opportunity to work this story. The original prompt is as follows:
> 
>  
> 
> _It's sort of a take-off on the third-season finale, only set in the modern day. Korra and Asami are going into their senior year of high school, and have been dating since the start of summer. Asami is on track to be valedictorian, while Korra is a star athlete. However, everything changes the weekend before school starts. The girlfriends are hanging out at the beach with their friends Mako and Bolin when Korra, a strong swimmer, dives into the surf. A sudden wave comes and slams her head-first into a sandbar, snapping her neck back. Asami sees her girlfriend floating in the water motionless and pulls her out to the sand, where a panicked Korra gasps out that she can't move._
> 
>  
> 
> _At the hospital, X-rays confirm that Korra's broken her neck, injuring her spinal cord at the C4 vertebrae and leaving her paralyzed from the shoulders down. Going from athlete to quadriplegic is devastating to Korra, and at first she's in denial, convinced that she can overcome her injury through sheer willpower in physical therapy. But as time goes on and she doesn't regain any movement or feeling below her injury, she's forced to face the reality that she may never walk or move her arms again._
> 
>  
> 
> _Asami sticks by Korra's side as she adjusts to her new life, and both her parents and Mako/Bolin are there to support her and cheer her up. Korra adapts as best she can, learning how to drive a wheelchair by blowing into a straw (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sip-and-puff) and to type, turn pages, or press buttons on her cell phone using a mouthstick, but is frustrated by her loss of independence. With her arms lying motionless on the cushioned armrests of her wheelchair, she's reliant on her parents or Asami for help to eat, do her hair, or even scratch her nose if she has an itch. It's only when Asami brings her information about a service dog program, and Korra meets Naga, a bright and energetic Great Pyrenees dog, that she starts to get her energy back and gains the courage to go back to school and resume her life._
> 
>  
> 
> _With Naga by her side to open doors for her, press buttons, and fetch things, and Asami never far away to help her girlfriend or give her some comfort, Korra is able to feel a bit like her former self again. She and Asami start going on dates again, and Korra slowly becomes more comfortable with relying on Asami to be her hands. They remain a strong, loving couple as Korra starts to figure out what comes next._
> 
>  
> 
> The story’s backbone belongs to wombatking; I’m just filling out the details.
> 
> Thanks also to Kate/winnofdaxam for being a cheerleader in all things. And to my brother for being a supportive dumbass.
> 
> And lastly, thank you for reading!


End file.
